You cannot take a 25 day vacation that includes five counties and two continents and expect to have the family be a picture of health the entire trip. Madrid is where I met my fate. Montezuma’s revenge I could handle, but I wasn’t prepared for the flu. While I only had two days where I was really out of it, it really derailed any Madrid itinerary we had. I was down and out pretty much all day Saturday and Sunday, the days we were expecting to hit the big museums and tourist things. Carrie helped us by getting me to the [View Full Entry]

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Friday night we - yes, you guessed it - did indeed eat babies in Madrid. Delicious, delicious babies. An old friend of my dad’s from back in the day, Carrie Szczerbik, is living in Madrid now, and she took us a little guided of tour of Madrid’s best tapas places. Tapas is a type of eating where they bring you small orders of lots of different types of food. Sometimes you pay for the food, sometimes they just give it you if you get something to drink. So last night we went to this restaurant where we ordered a lot of [View Full Entry]

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Ellie- We're back in Spain, and so far it's pretty good. The place we are staying at is like an apartment because it is so big! Our landlord's dog is so cute! He is an Afghan Hound and he looks like a big shag rug! Last night, the taxi driver who drove us from the airport was driving over 150 kmh fast! Once we got to the street our hotel was on, he went in reverse all the way down the street to our street number. That was a bit crazy! [View Full Entry]

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We spent the day today on an expedition arranged by our host ("host" being the guy that runs the riad, the small hotel we stayed in). We thought we were going for a nice drive to the mountains. Well, the drive was nice. The Ourika Valley is about 70 km from Marrakech and is at the base of the Atlas Mountains. So we're just happy as clams, rumbling out there at about 30 mph in our Mercedes taxi (circa 1974 model, diesel I think, with carpeting on the dashboard and bungees holding the trunk closed), listening to Abdul (the driver), and [View Full Entry]

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Ellie- Morocco has an excess of three things: people, cats, and mopeds. There are a gajillion cats around every street corner meowing and begging for food. In the town square in Marrackech, there aren't even any stoplights or street lanes! Yet I haven't seen a single car crash or even any road rage. There is this huge marketplace called The Suks, and it is CRAZY! You kind of get used to all of the hawkers and people trying to sell you stuff. About the food in Morroco: it's delicous! I have already fallen in love with this dish called Tajine Berbere, [View Full Entry]

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Yes its right! I Anna D. Butler have survived Kids Club for 1 WEEK! I made lots of friends.Freinds from flordia, U.K,Malta, and New york. Names are Sara, Miranda, Eloise, Jessica, and Natasha. The first day I met Eloise and Miranda, and Electric(Erik) one of the counselors!. The second day it was Sea Day so that was fun, it was Create Your own Crusie ship! so when I was ready all the pairs were taken except for the spainish brother and sister it was hard to work with them, but they liked my artwork. The third day was just a day [View Full Entry]

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Very nice day in the south of France, visiting the small town of Villefranche. Nowhere to dock, so we were tendered ashore in a little ferry boat. Easy to understand why this area (near Nice, Monte Carlo, Monaco) gets so many rave reviews - beautiful, quiet, and peaceful. We spent a couple hours ashore while we walked around and let the kids stick their feet in and splash around the cool Mediterranean waters. After that it was back to the ship for a couple of very stressful hours hanging out at the pool. [View Full Entry]

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A forecast of rain most of the day kept us from taking the 2 hour bus ride to Florence. Instead we opted for a quick 20 minute drive to Pisa - and we loved it. Great town, much smaller than we might have expected. The leaning tower was beautiful, not to mention very cool! In our first "it's a small world" moment of our trip, we ran into a woman from Nashville buying gelato in Pisa. Go figure! [View Full Entry]

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Took the bus for the almost two hour drive to Rome today. We had about 5 hours in the city, but a midday rainstorm limited us to three things: The Colosseum, lunch (pizza again!) and Trevi Fountain. The scale of the Colosseum was huge - felt as bit as Wrigley Field, but built about 2100 years earlier. Trevi Fountain was also much larger than expected and we all contributed the Roman economy by tossing in some coins. The pizza was great but the gelato was better. Today has dented my belief that Italy is a horribly managed county. Naples was really [View Full Entry]

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As our first of three stops in Italy, we were disappointed with Naples. It was as dirty and smelly (and the people as indifferent) as rumored. Graffiti and trash literally were everywhere - no building or street was spared (that we saw). We walked the city for a couple of hours and the best we can say is that the Napoli margherita pizza is without a doubt the best we've ever had. Hey, that's something anyway! [View Full Entry]

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